Mental health court coming to Kane County

January 11, 2006|By Rita Hoover, Special to the Tribune

Building on the success of its popular drug rehabilitation court as an alternative to incarceration, Kane County is set to establish a new mental health court for non-violent offenders beginning in February.

Funding approval for the program was approved Tuesday by the County Board.

To finance the mental health court, Kane courts on Feb. 1 will begin assessing a $10 fee on every criminal defendant with a guilty judgment or a grant of supervision.

A resolution establishing the new court fee was approved Tuesday by the board's unanimous vote.

Kane County Circuit Judge Timothy Sheldon will oversee the mental health court, which will be held once a week at the county judicial center in St. Charles, according to Chief Judge Donald Hudson.

The aim is to reduce future criminal activity and improve public safety, Hudson said. An additional benefit to the court will be the potential savings to the county by "stopping the revolving door" of incarceration for people whose mental illness causes them to break laws or commit crimes, he said.

"The goal is to treat the underlying condition--the cause of the behavior," Hudson said. "That seems to be the key."

Although Kane will be the third county in Illinois to establish a mental health court--Cook and DuPage are the others--the new venture is not based on "any particular existing court," Hudson said. He said the plan is to create what he described as "a hybrid" of the others that best fits Kane's needs.

According to Hudson, the impetus for a specialty court is "to work with offenders who have a serious mental illness who come into contact with the criminal justice system to provide improved access to treatment."

The new court fee is expected to generate about $65,000 to $75,000 annually to help underwrite the program.

Like drug rehabilitation court, the mental health court will require volunteer defendants to sign releases for treatment and be screened by court staff before being declared eligible. A diagnostic assessment revealing a serious mental illness plus approval by the Kane County state's attorney's office also will be required for admission to the program.

The program also will consider offenders who have a pre-existing diagnosis, Hudson said.

The free program requires defendants to commit to up to two years of treatment.

Hudson said the program is limited to voluntary participants charged with misdemeanors or non-violent, low-level felonies in which no weapon is involved and for which there is no mandatory jail or prison time.

According to James McNish, past president of the Kane County chapter of the National Association for the Mentally Ill, Kane's mental health court can be "a carrot" to improve compliance for those who need to stay on a medication regimen in order to stabilize their condition.

McNish said there has been "substantially reduced recidivism rates" in criminal behavior for participants in mental health courts.